If you’re writing articles for EzineArticles.com, the big article directory sites, don’t try to trick the search engines.
The website is cracking down on keyword abuse and rejecting thousands of articles by writers, many of whom are trying to beat the system. Writers abuse keywords when they repeat them over and over again in the same article, hoping to trick the search engines and earn a high ranking.
Within the last month, the site rejected a whopping 2,416 articles.
Christopher Knight of EzineArticles.com gave this example of a paragraph that’s stuffed with the keyword phrase “massage table.”
“If you want to be a massage therapist, you’ll have to buy a massage table. Massage tables come in many sizes, from big massage tables that are not portable to small massage tables that fold up for portability.”
If keywords don’t appear naturally in copy, they look, well, unnatural. And Google and the other search engines are smarter than we give them credit for. They spot that repetition within a split second and actually penalize the writer with a low ranking.
“I can’t tell you specifically what our internal criteria is for when we’ll reject an article for keyword and key phrase repetition vs. abuse because we need to be deliberately vague to prevent gaming of the system,” he says.
Read his entire explanation, including the three tips he shares so you don’t abuse keywords.
Then start writing articles and submitting them to his site. It’s a fabulous way to flaunt your expertise and earn inbound links to your website or blog.
If you hate writing or you can’t write, I’ve solved the problem for you. I’ve written a handy template for a how-to article. See “How to Write How-to Articles.”
I’m glad someone is talking about this. We deal with these editors on a daily basis. Ezine has definitely earned one of the top spots among article directories, and their editors are a big reason why.
In case you are wondering, they flag an article when it exceeds 3% keyword density — which is pretty forgiving for a well-written article. As Joan said, keyword stuffed articles look unnatural from the get-go.
A little-mentioned aspect of their zealous editorial staff: they make mistakes. When your article is flagged, don’t automatically assume they are right. Like all human editors, they have good and bad days.
If you did not set out to fool the search engines, ask questions.
If they flag you for keywords, check their math yourself. Make sure you know which keyword they flagged your article for.
If they flag you for promotion, make sure you deserve it.
We recently ran an article campaign for a client who offers technical training on networking software. We basically gave away a few “how to fix this problem” worksheets from their training manual through Ezine.
One of article went through without a hitch. The other was flagged as “too promotional” They thought we were trying to sell the software. Once I explained to the editor, they released the article.
The editors make every effort to be polite and courteous while doing their job. For others using this service: if the editors err on the side of caution with one of your articles, remember to give them the same courtesy when you respond.